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Headlights Are Growing Brighter (www.cbc.ca) 139

Modern LED headlights are significantly brighter and more glaring than traditional halogen bulbs, creating dangerous driving conditions, lighting experts report. The newer lights produce an intense, concentrated beam that is bluer and more disorienting, particularly affecting older drivers. "Headlights are getting brighter, smaller and bluer. All three of those things increase a particular kind of glare. It's called discomfort glare," said Daniel Stern, chief editor of Driving Vision News.

Headlights Are Growing Brighter

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  • Between halogens and LEDs, there was an era of xenon headlights that were proliferating into mid tier cars when LEDs got decent enough to start replacing them. Xenons are way, WAY brighter than current LEDs (minus the massive light bars, floodlights, etc people install in addition to normal headlights).

    And they were bluer too.

    Is this really a problem of LEDs?

    • by Entrope ( 68843 )

      "Some headlights were even worse for a short period of time" is not actually an argument that LED headlights are not bad, much less a coherent argument for that proposition.

      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        "These were a norm regardless" on the other hand is. And that's my point. Halogens were going away fast long before LED adoption.

        Regardless this is a problem that will eventually be solved by proliferation of AHS LED headlights. That's matrix based headlights that have zones within lights that turn off when a car is driving in the opposite direction.

      • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        The high color temperature of headlights has now become so bad that I have had to start to use yellow tinted glasses.

        Maximize the color temperature to 3000K.

        Add to it that the auto-dimming and the "glare free" headlights are stupid as a prick and only dims down after they have made sure you have been hit with the full deathstar power of those fully operational headlights.

    • Re:Xenons? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PPH ( 736903 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2024 @12:42PM (#65038657)

      Xenons are way, WAY brighter

      I never perceived them to be as much of a problem as LEDs. Xenon capsules are not replaceable by non-spec LED capsules. They are expensive as well, so less motivation to throw the factory bulbs out. Vehicles equipped with Xenon headlamps typically had self-leveling fixtures. So less of that bright light in your eyes.

      I have a European vehicle with the oversized H4 headlamps. But very well engineered. The low beam pattern has a very sharp upper and left side cutoff and put more of their light on the road. So in spite of the higher lumen output, they don't bother oncoming traffic. It's the headlamp optics and putting the correct bulb in for the lamp that makes the critical difference. Instead of letting the ricers pick whatever they want off the store shelf.

    • The one thing that Xenon had going for it was it still allowed for good optical control. The problem with most of the LED headlights is that the optical control is poor, so you get more light spread than intended. This just comes down to physics; the reflector needs to be 8-10x the chip (or array of chips) size for reasonable control.

      • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        The LED spread is intentional - push out a wider light pattern because the LEDs have a higher capacity. This means that you also put more glare around corners on the road totally blinding other drivers.

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        The one thing that Xenon had going for it was it still allowed for good optical control.

        This.

        The 'emitter' in a xenon bulb is actually a very small arc. Very small means easier to focus. Hence, better fixture design.

        Incandescent (particularly halogen) have a somewhat larger filament. Although it's only about 0.25 inches long.

        LED bulbs tend to be made from multiple emitters, fixed around the sides of a cylindrical post. This is done primarily for thermal control because its not feasible to get the same luminous flux out of a small area like a single LED chip (without melting it). The emittin

        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          One other point I forgot about: The whole "bluish tint" thing is marketing. It originated with the introduction of Xenon headlights as an option on high end cars. Manufacturers were worried that nobody would want to drop an extra grand if no one else could tell they had Xenons. So they changed the capsule gas mix to make the light bluish.

          Aftermarket ricer bulbs came out with blue filters on their cheap halogen bulbs. But these use dichroic filters, which reflect unwanted colors off axis (just blocking that

  • when traveling in the city?

    • They do not. At least not around here. I'm beginning to think cars are no longer equipped with low beams (dipped beams).

      I've been blinded by the glare of on-coming headlights at 2 o'clock on a bright sunny afternoon. It's fscking absurd.

      • by localroger ( 258128 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2024 @02:31PM (#65038847) Homepage
        I have not noticed a lot of people driving around with their high beams on all the time, but I have noticed a lot of vehicles whose low beams look like highs until they turn on the real high beams and fry a block of the city around them.
      • by quetwo ( 1203948 )

        I've got a co-worker who drives around with the high-beams on all the time. Their new Buick uses the front-facing sensors to determine if a car is coming or if they are following a car. It auto-drops them when it detects a car, so they so it as 'auto mode'.

        It does not detect pedestrians, cyclists or any other road users. It detects other cars most of the time. They don't care -- they bought the feature.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      Depends on the individual, and their training (or lack of it). I've argued with coworkers who claimed that it was safer to run with high beams all the time, that low beam lights were only for when the car is parked. Two of them said they were taught that in their drivers training course.

      As pedestrians who walk their dogs at night we're appalled by the number of people utterly oblivious to the effect of their headlights on walkers.

  • by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2024 @12:37PM (#65038647)

    It's the aim. Properly aimed LED headlights are fine
    Many people either don't know how to properly aim their lights, don't care or even worse, intentionally mis-aim

    • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2024 @12:51PM (#65038685)

      It's the aim. Properly aimed LED headlights are fine Many people either don't know how to properly aim their lights, don't care or even worse, intentionally mis-aim

      When the driver of a sub-compact car is staring into the oncoming SUVs grill, the problem becomes a bit more glaring.

      • Multiple problems are making headlights problematic. SUVs, big pickups and other big cars have headlights above or aimed directly at the windshields of smaller cars, including sedans as well as compacts and sub-contacts. This year I've noticed more and more huge cars taller than I am (at six feet) and so wide they fill the lines of a parking space. When they part beside you it's hard to see out the back when you're getting out of a parking space. Air scatters blue light much more than green light causing
        • The good news is that new headlights in development will be able to sense oncoming cars and redirect the headlight beam automatically.

          This has been a thing for ages in Europe. The bad news is domestic regulators may still take a couple decades to hear about it.

        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          It's worse when there's rain on the asphalt, and even worse when you're a pedestrian.

          sense oncoming cars

          When they sense pedestrians and bicyclists I'll consider them useful.

        • by quetwo ( 1203948 )

          Auto-detecting oncoming cars is already a feature in higher-end cars in the US. It's also highly inaccurate as designed (it will detect oncoming cars most of the time -- assuming there are no hills, ice, snow, rain, etc), and does not help with pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and other road users.

      • by Dusanyu ( 675778 )
        or when they are behind you blasting you through the rear view mirrors as well
        • or when they are behind you blasting you through the rear view mirrors as well

          What I try to do in a situation such as this is adjust my outside mirrors so the light is reflected back toward them. Don't know if I'm hitting them, but I try.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            I was wondering how effective a mirror one way film on the back window would be. Provides privacy, dims glare, and reflects ultra bright headlights back at the guy behind you.

      • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2024 @03:19PM (#65038919)

        This is one of the big problems. People's penises are getting smaller and they insist on the need for ever bigger cars. These are unsafe for many reasons, and raised headlights which are impossible to dip below the mirror height of the car in front is one of them.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's an arms race. Bigger cars so that in an accident, the other vehicle gets crushed and you survive. Super bright headlights so you can see, even if everyone else is screwed.

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        When the driver of a sub-compact car is staring into the oncoming SUVs grill, the problem becomes a bit more glaring.

        IT's one of the cases where projector headlights might be the key. They're in the EU already, but US regulations prohibit them currently. They basically allow you to have very bright headlights, but they dim the part of the headlight that is aimed at other drivers, so even your little subcompact driver gets to see your headlights are on, but his vision isn't dazzled - your headlights merely c

    • by bsolar ( 1176767 )

      It's the aim. Properly aimed LED headlights are fine Many people either don't know how to properly aim their lights, don't care or even worse, intentionally mis-aim

      Additionally some modern LED headlights are advertised to be "smart", meaning that there is a LED matrix able to create a non-illuminated spot towards other vehicles while keeping the rest of the road illuminated.

      My car has one of those and has an "auto" settings that not only turns on the normal headlights when it's dark, but also activates the high beams when it detects it's outside of an urban area (e.g. on the highway or on a countryside road) and keeps the high beam on when it detects oncoming traffic,

      • but also activates the high beams when it detects it's outside of an urban area (e.g. on the highway or on a countryside road)

        As the Campaign for Dark Skies would say, we have normalised wasting energy lighting up things that don't need to be lit, and called it "light pollution".

        • High beams outside of a city are great as they light up things further away. Of course they also dazzle other drivers, but if I do not see a car going the other direction I turn them on. It's not like they use that much more power - low beams are 55W and high beams are 60W, at least that's what is written on the lightbulb.

          • The position of the filament w.r.t the focal point of the reflector is probably significantly (and of necessity, repeatably) different between high and low beam. You can be moderately confident that the reflector is as close as necessary to a paraboloid of rotation, but how it's aligned to the car's road position, I'd have to go out and measure my car. It's raining. Not doing that.

            That's probably more significant than the difference in power. I can't say I've looked at a headlamp beyond checking that the m

    • by sinij ( 911942 )
      No, properly aimed LED headlights are not fine in all circumstances, because they remain properly aimed only on a perfectly level ground.
    • It's the aim. Properly aimed LED headlights are fine
      Many people either don't know how to properly aim their lights, don't care

      Don't care to properly aim, or much MUCH more commonly can't be bothered to dip their lights to oncoming traffic. That, plus as already mentioned, SUVs and trucks have become yet another form of menace to those of us who prefer cars. Even when their lights are dipped they're still shining straight into my eyes.

    • It's not just the aim. Aim doesn't matter if the road has any elevation change at all, since the lights will be angled into your eye at some point. Independent of aim, LED bulbs are much worse than traditional bulbs.

      Side note, virtually all problems that brighter headlights solve are solved by simply slowing down a few mph.

    • Mis-aimed lights have been an MoT failure since ... before I learned to drive.

      I've seen note that MoT test protocols (and thus, testing station equipment) now require testing of lamp brightness. You used to be able to take the car away form the station, twiddle your knobs, and being it back for re-test without paying an additional fee. Not sure if that applies to "too bright" lamps too. As parts intended for user-servicing at the side of the road, I would expect so, but I'm not certain.

    • No, it's not only the aim. Sooner or later your beam will meet someone's eye, even if only for a short time. Be it because you're coming up behind a hill and your beam aims high owing to the curvature of the road, or because you've just hit a bump, or whatever... you will hit someone's eye.

    • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      Blue light also destroys night vision. After sunset on the bridge of at least naval ships, I can attest, that the lights in the bridge are all red in order to maintain maximum visibility over the ocean. The blue wavelength of these 5500K and 6500K lights are washing out the retina of oncoming cars and temporarily dulling their ability to sharply see the road. Thats even without LEDs laser-like direction of light projection. Its not quite as bad as washing a helicopter on a green laser pointer but its not th

  • Correct (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Berkyjay ( 1225604 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2024 @12:50PM (#65038681)

    I keep getting blinded by oncoming cars. So I flash my high beams thinking that they left theirs on, only to be hit with a blast from the sun itself as they respond in kind.

    • I keep getting blinded by oncoming cars. So I flash my high beams thinking that they left theirs on, only to be hit with a blast from the sun itself as they respond in kind.

      Nicely sums up TFS/TFA.

  • Yup... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drew_92123 ( 213321 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2024 @12:51PM (#65038687)

    ...where we live it's a huge problem.

    The brightness and color of aftermarket LED bulbs are bad enough.... but when you also take into account the fact that the LEDs are usually not in the same place as the element in a standard bulb you have even bigger issues with the light being improperly focused especially in reflector style housings(this is less of an issue in projector housings, but still an issue).

    Then there are all the lifted truck coal rolling dude bros with their multiple off road light bars that they run full time that are often far brighter than any headlight.

    Personally I think every single one of them should be charged with endangering the lives of other drivers, spend a month in jail, and have their cars impounded for 90 days at their expense.

    • Why impound them? Simply crush them, and send the disposal bill to the owner.

      That's what we do here for driving without insurance, driving without tax, driving in an unsafe condition (which would probably cover this situation), driving without a license.

      The point is to get the bad. uninsured drivers (and bad cars) off the road, permanently. Or until they steal another car, in which case they're probably going to rapidly progress to other jailable offences.

  • ”chief editor of Driving Vision News” such a narrow scope of subject material I mean how many articles can you write about vision while driving that you need a chief editor?
  • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2024 @12:56PM (#65038705)
    Many years ago, pre-LED days, I had a car with really dim halogen lights. After researching this subject, I decided that the right way to do this is to mount HID projectors and bulbs from a crashed high-end car in place of reflectors. This was a very labor intensive and expensive project, but the end result was worth it as I was not blinding anyone with my lights. Most people take a shortcut and drop replacement HID or LED bulbs in place of halogen bulbs and that always results in blinding.

    The main reason drop-in bulbs blind is because it is very hard to hit precise focal points in a reflector with anything but a halogen bulb that has precisely positioned filament that produces even light in all directions. HID bulbs produce plasma arc but it is not nearly as fixed in place, as a consequence they only used with more-expensive projector setups. So if you drop HID bulb into reflector you start blinding people - optics are out of focus and you start getting a lot of stray lights. The same goes with LED drop-in bulbs, but reasons are slightly different. I think direct drop-in conversions should be banned and selling direct fit replacement headlight bulbs of a different type should be illegal, as someone knowingly making not fit for purpose product that could never work safely.

    Now, there is a new issue - OEM LED lights that are just too bright. The issue with these is that sharp cutoff is configured for level driving, but any big bumps or cresting results in blinding. The solution to these is to mandate self-leveling. I don't know why this is not mandatory, in the past many HID headlights would come with self-leveling tech, it should be easier to implement this with LEDs are they are lighter and smaller than HID lens+bulb.
    • by StikyPad ( 445176 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2024 @03:28PM (#65038925) Homepage

      Self/auto-leveling headlights are far from a panacea. There is the limited range of motion issue, but more importantly, roads are not flat. If you're cresting a hill at the same time as another driver in the opposite direction, your lights are going to shine in the oncoming driver's eyes, period.

      More advanced (so-called "matrix" LED) headlights, in conjunction with cameras, can instead detect oncoming vehicles and create local dimming in that direction. There's room for improvement in the execution, but the theory is sound, and improvements can be delivered in OTA updates rather than replacing the hardware. Which is good, because the hardware is not cheap.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Matrix lights should sense when the car is coming over a crest and pre-dim. All it needs is an angle sensor and an upper and lower limit for rate of change that filter out bumps and gentle rolling.

    • Self-levelling, at least on my Subaru, isn't engineered for bumps or cresting. It's for when the rear end is loaded.

  • any pundit or blogger that says otherwise is either blind from said lights, or has some agenda sponsored by big headlight.
  • My car came with the LED's and yes I get flashed and folks doing aftermarket or just have tall SUV's and Trucks are a challenge as well. I agree with sinj above on the same challenges.

    I think it would be cool if the lights would alter spectrum to 2500K when cars are coming from other direction. I think that would be doable, since cars like mine can be set to auto change mode already, and would help everyone out.
  • Wouldn't be hard to add a headlight aim test and DOT-approved headlight requirement.

    So many cars will fail that this would probably be lucrative for the auto shops.
    • As does my state. It includes headlight aim test. I've experienced having my headlight aim tested ONCE in the 40 years I've been driving. The inspector was some young kid jut out of school. I had to show him how to use the aiming equipment (we had the same rig at the shop where I worked. Needless to say my headlight aim passed inspection. ;-)

    • What? You mean this hasn't been a requirement since ... oh, seatbelts? 1970-something?

      Seriously?

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        Depends on location, and local enforcement. Some areas do a decent job of handling the issue, most do not.

        • Ah, well, that'll be the actual problem then. Without effective (and reasonably consistent) enforcement of vehicle standards, then the "lowest bidder" in terms of "states with strong enforcement" will win, and everyone will go to the cheapest state in their area to get their car inspected.

          The border posts between states - they stop and inspect vehicles? No? Otherwise, how can they know that the vehicles coming into state are up to their state's standards?

          Since the incoming President is such a fan of tarif

  • It's complicated. Germany here. Two years ago, I changed from an ancient mid-range sedan with H4 lamps to an old mid-range sedan with H7 lamps (the original buyer didn't want to pay extra for Xenon). While high beam was brilliant, low beam was much worse than on the older H4 car. When LED upgrades became officially legal for my car this year, I immediately changed, and now high beam is excellent and low beam is very good; finally I can drive again at night without the fear to overlook something.

    The general

    • by bsolar ( 1176767 )

      The biggest problem here is that more and more people just don't bother anymore to switch back from high beam to low beam in oncoming traffic, and in slow traffic on narrow lanes that can nearly blind you for some time. This is what really bothers me most.

      That's because some drivers in cars with modern LED matrix headlights don't bother to manually switch to high beams in the first place. These cars have an "auto" setting for the headlights that not only turns on the low beams when it detects darkness, but also turns on the high beams automatically when it detects that the car is not in an urban area.

      In that situation, the LED matrix system is supposed to keep operating on high beams but detect oncoming traffic and create a dark spot in the LED matrix aimed

    • > finally I can drive again at night without the fear to overlook something.

      I'm pretty sure that you seeing well inhibits oncoming drivers from seeing well.

      What I learned from my time as an avid cyclist is: lights are primarily to make you be seen, not for you to see very well where you're going. At night, slow down.

  • I have definitely noticed an increase in lights that are just not aimed well. Had one just the other day - the bulb on the far side form me was just aimed up and across the street right at incoming drivers, while the one closer the the lane divider was fine. That tells me it wasn't brights on. I don't know if it's poor aiming as installed, or failing with some cars that have "smart" headlights that are just messing up.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Probably collision damage. I can't even count the number of beaters with duct tape holding their headlights in.

    • by bobby ( 109046 )

      Many current car headlamps are retained in the reflector housing by a twist-lock base plate that has 3 metal tabs. It can somewhat fight you as you install it. It is very possible to put it in crooked- one tab not under the mating receiver socket, rather on top of it, such that the bulb is quite crooked- off center, hence the focus now being way off of the intended spot. I've seen them far high, far low, far left, far right, etc. Like many things, "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" applies to m

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/fucky... [reddit.com]

    I began to notice what I originally thought was an epidemic of fucktards driving around with their brights on during covid, and I chalked it up to them forgetting that you don't drive with brights on in town. Then it not only persisted but got worse and worse and I realized this wasn't some random thing because it happened on new-model cars, not old shitboxes

    Eventually I stumbled upon the above Reddit and realized that it's actually some kind of brain damaged failure
  • It was suggested a metric forever ago and never got picked up. :(
  • Got a Tesla about a year ago, when out in the country I constantly get flashed by other drivers that think I have my high beams on. Like every few minutes of driving time. This looks like a NHTSA fail, most federal agencies have been distracted from core missions in recent years. At least they're finally allowing ADB (Adaptive Driving Beam) headlights which have been standard in the EU...
    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      I would suggest that you either learn how to aim your headlights, or if that's prohibited by the warranty take it in and have it fixed.

  • https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

    Discuss, you have 10 hours.

  • It's also the idiots who drive around in a mental fog with their "fog" lights on, producing unnecessary glare. "Fog" lights in the US are less than worthless - they're not allowed to be on without the headlights, so you can't reduce the light reflected by fog by using them, and they do nothing to improve visibility. They do, however, create additional glare for oncoming drivers. They should be eliminated, or at least required to turn off automatically every time the ignition is turned off.

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